In the West, this took the form of land.
People who wanted to work their way up from the lower classes to the middle classes found opportunities in ranching and farming. Farming meant growing crops like corn, wheat, and beans, and having farm animals that lived on relatively small fields. These animals were fed with some of the corn that the farmers grew.
Ranching, on the other hand, meant not growing any crops, and having animals roam over huge amounts of land, grazing on the grass and other plants which grew there.
The difference between ranching and farming would lead to social tensions. The livestock belonging to the ranchers would sometimes trample across farm fields, causing great damage to the crops.
Farmers and cowboys often clashed. The word ‘cowboy’ had originally a negative connotation. The cowboys were supposed to guide the cattle from place to place, and the farmers held the cowboys responsible for damage done to farm crops. The image of the ‘cowboy’ at that time was one of an irresponsible troublemaker.
A big change came with the invention of barbed wire. Fences built around farm fields kept the plants safe, and kept the animals where they were supposed to be. Barbed wire brought peace to the conflict between ranchers and farmers.
The Northeast was being transformed by modernization, urbanization, and industrialization. Those ideas seem to be the very opposite of the popular image of the West, as historian Wilfred McClay writes:
But what of the great American West, that other mythic land of dreams? Had it been affected by these forces? With its great open spaces, its magnificent mountains and craggy canyons, its mighty rivers and verdant timberlands, surely it was majestically unconquerable, still resolutely the land of individualism and personal freedom so central to the American identity and way of life?
Yet the barbed wire which brought progress to the West was a product of the Northeastern industrial establishment, as were many of the tools and firearms needed to build and feed the West’s growing population.
The West consumed a large share of the Northeast’s industrial output, providing customers for manufactured goods. The West also provided the raw materials for the Northeast’s factories.
But aside from this economic relationship, maybe the West could maintain its unique character. The West was and is associated, in the popular imagination, with fierce independence. Maybe the West could retain its peculiar sense of liberty?
Maybe, but maybe not. The flow of migrants into the region after the Civil War was just as relentless as it was elsewhere, and the growing importance of the mining and cattle industries combined with the reach of the railroads was bringing the West into the more general range of the nation’s consolidating forces. The heyday of the romantic cowboy, riding the open range and steering cattle drives of three thousand head or more northward to cow towns like Sedalia and Abilene, looms large in our imaginations. But it was actually quite brief, only a couple of decades between the end of the Civil War and the late 1880s, as farmers and ranchers began butting up against one another and settled property lines became a necessity. Ironically, the heavy involvement of the federal government in the western states, and federal ownership of roughly half the land of the West, would soon make the West the region least free of federal influence.
More enduring was the impact of mining. The California Gold Rush brought adventurers and speculators to the West in the late 1840s, but more serious mining trends began: in 1858, gold was discovered near Pikes Peak in Colorado.
In 1859, silver was discovered near Virginia City, Nevada. This discovery was called ‘The Comstock Lode,’ although Henry Comstock had sold the land before the silver was discovered.
In the 1870s, silver was discovered at Leadville, Colorado, and gold was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota. In the same decade, copper was discovered in Montana.
Miners had already come to Arizona in the 1860s and 1870s to work in the copper mines there, but in 1877, silver was discovered near Tombstone Arizona.
Each of these mining discoveries brought a sudden increase in population. Tiny towns suddenly had hundreds or thousands of new residents. Towns appeared and grew quickly where there had been no towns before. These fast-growing places were called ‘boomtowns.’
Although economically vibrant, boomtowns had problems of their own. The vast majority of their population was made up of men between the ages of 17 and 40. There were few women, and even fewer children and old people.
When a town lacks a balanced population, social problems arise. When there are few women, children, and old people, there is more crime. The boomtowns in the mining areas of the West were often dangerous places to be.
As the mining industry developed, however, the boomtowns matured into healthy communities, with families balancing the population. With a full range of ages — from small children to the elderly — and with an even distribution of men and women in the population, the boomtowns became prosperous cities with less crime.
